I Know How To Read
Reading Your Dreams Out LoudLearn how you can get involved in your local community.
Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.
What We Do
We deliver free books and literacy resources to those children and families who need them most. We encourage children to develop good reading habits that will produce life long readers by volunteering our time and working with them to achieve their goals.
Why We Care
If our caring effort enriches the lives of young minds than we all succeed.
Almost two-thirds of low-income families in the U.S. do not own books.
Access to printed materials has an important impact on a child’s literary development.
Children in lower income areas have substantially lower access to written material for many reasons including smaller book collections in libraries, limited material in day cares, and limited appropriate materials in stores and their environment.
In Houston, 31% of the population is not literate. In terms of the literacy rate, a national study has placed Houston 53rd out of a total of 69 cities in a ranking of “America’s Most Literate Cities.” We need to change these statistics.
I Know How to Read’s vision is to educate on the importance of preparing Houston’s youngest children to succeed by putting a book in their hands. Through the simple act of placing books in children’s hands, I Know How To Read, reinforces the powerful understanding that literacy begins well before children enter kindergarten.
To encourage young children to read by working with them, as well as providing them and anyone else involved in helping them develop these reading skills, the necessary information, tools and motivation to do so.
Make reading a passion…
The ability to read is a powerful tool, but a passion for reading is an even more powerful quality. We develop our passion for reading at the earliest of ages. When we are young children, our parents or the adults in our lives read to us. We have yet to gain the ability to read the words ourselves, but by being read to we have opened the door to a world of wonder.
Too often we underestimate the power of Literacy!
Children who lack a strong foundation of language awareness and literacy skills early in life are more likely to fall behind and have a tougher time in school. Statistics show that reading to young children makes them not only smarter but healthier and better prepared for life. It is this simple truth that led the founders to create I Know How To Read, a citywide program that gives books and literacy material to all Houston and surrounding area children and schools.
